Purity Ring: You always remember your first album

Shrines, the debut album from Edmonton-forged duo Purity Ring, is available now.

Photograph by: Handout
, Last Gang

It’s been a day since Purity Ring debuted their first album, Shrines -- and a day since outlets including The Guardian, Paste, the BBC (and this one) published enough gushing reviews to score the Edmonton-forged duo a 91 on review-aggregating site Metacritic. “Purity Ring have pulled off the feat of producing one of the year's most arresting debuts,” BBC Music proclaimed. Pitchfork deigned to give Shrines’ 11 songs of menacing bedroom pop an 8.4. First time’s the charm? That’s been the rule for Purity Ring since their origin -- just a year and a half ago.

Megan James and Corin Roddick share a phone line to tell the story -- she’s in Halifax, he’s in Montreal -- and, finishing each other’s sentences, Roddick sets the scene in “December 2010.”

“Yeah, actually, I’d say January of ’11,” James interjects.

OK.

Well.

The point is, both Edmonton natives were home for the holidays when Roddick thought he’d ask James to sing over something he’d been developing. “We wrote our first song,” James says of what resulted from their single day of recording, “and then released it two weeks later. Less, I think.”

That song would be “Ungirthed” -- a first attempt that managed to attract Purity Ring’s first critical acclaim. The Guardian’s regular “New Music” feature put their spotlight on the track the same month Purity Ring innocently posted it online. Pitchfork, among other sites, followed. “There aren’t that many really major things that picked it up,” says James, “there were just a few, but it was like, ‘Whoa. OK. Let’s write another song. Let’s try that again.”

“That” -- that “Ungirthed” sound -- is something Purity Ring has stayed true to all over Shrines. That first song is a spare electronic pop experiment, skittering and lurching in its instrumentals. James’ voice, an airy soprano, floats brightly over the unsettling stops and starts of the beats. The sound is sweet -- even if she’s cooing lyrics about death and rotting “piles of bones.” And that formula -- that juxtaposition -- of hooks and spook is a combination that repeatedly works for them on the album. When Roddick and James revisit "Ungirthed," though, it sounds like the work of total newbs. (“Odebear,” Shrines’ first single and the last song they recorded, “has a lot more atmosphere,” Roddick says, by way of explanation. “I didn’t know how to do that when I was making ‘Ungirthed.'”)

Because, again, it was a first try.

It was a first try at making electronic music. “When I made ‘Ungirthed’ I’d been attempting to make electronic music for maybe five months,” says Roddick. How’d he teach himself? "Just straight up sitting in front of a computer for MANY hours,” he says, his program of choice being Ableton Live. (Previously a percussionist for Edmonton party-pop act Born Gold, formerly known as Gobble Gobble, he remembers going on tour “in a van with like three other dudes … sitting there with headphones on” cramming the finer points of pop production.)

Never mind the electronic aspect of things, for Roddick, “Ungirthed” was also a first try at making music, period. “This was the first time I’d really attempted to write music,” he says. “I’d been thinking about writing music for probably two years, and thought about how I would do it.” In terms of the division of labour, Roddick composes the instrumentals, James provides the lyrics and melody -- an arrangement that, again, goes back to that first session.

“As soon as I heard Megan’s vocal part for the song,” Roddick says, again talking about the making of “Ungirthed,” “I knew we should be a band. I told her that.” James giggles.

Love, of a professional sort, at first listen.

So what comes second for Purity Ring?

The band has been touring North American this summer, and by the fall, they’ll return for a series of shows in the West. Creating a special sort of live experience is the band’s first priority. Their set-up is simple -- nothing the Flaming Lips should envy -- but very visual: James creates their costumes and Roddick has developed a light system -- a sort of series of lanterns -- that responds to the music they play. “We’re trying to make more of a performance than just setting up and playing,” says James. “Exactly,” adds Roddick. “No one’s going to want to watch me press a space bar.” And, ideally, their show will only become “bigger and brighter” in the future.

“I’ve always wanted to do something more interactive,” says James. “Give the audience a purpose, other than their presence.”

“I think that’s the cool thing about our set-up,” adds Roddick. “We can take these concepts that we’ve created and go as far as we want with it. If we were just playing drums and guitar it’d be like, well, what comes after that? Like, bigger amps?” he laughs. “I feel like with what we’re doing, here’s the opportunity for being visually creative.”

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